Global battery deployments surpassed 1.5 terawatt-hours in 2024, roughly ten times the total installed in 2020, according to International Energy Agency figures cited by Canary Media's Chart of the Week column.

The scale-up, concentrated in China, has reshaped the material flows that feed lithium-ion cell production and the cost economics that now determine where new gigafactories get financed. Lithium-ion pack prices in 2025 sat 93% below 2010 levels and 36% below 2020, per the same IEA analysis — a cost curve that has compressed margins for prospective recyclers as quickly as it has driven cell deployment.

Where the build-out sits

Canary Media reported that most of the batteries placed in service last year were deployed within China, primarily to power electric vehicles. Grid-scale storage is the faster-growing segment: annual deployments globally expanded nearly nineteenfold between 2020 and 2025, reaching volumes that already shape utility-scale procurement cycles in the US and Europe.

Energy research firm BloombergNEF expects that trajectory to continue, projecting annual deployments to double by the end of the decade. That forecast carries direct implications for recovered-material supply: every additional gigawatt-hour entering service today represents a future feedstock stream — and a future collection liability — within ten to fifteen years.

The mineral processing gap

China's grip extends well beyond cell assembly. The nation "plays an outsized role in refining and processing the minerals needed to make batteries," Canary Media reported, citing IEA data. That position complicates closed-loop ambitions in importing regions, where lithium, nickel and cobalt recovery depends on chemistries and cell formats designed overseas.

The EU, "perennially concerned about energy security," has set a target of meeting 90% of its own domestic battery demand by 2030. Canary Media's reporting indicates the bloc "is not on track to hit that target," leaving European recyclers reliant on imported cells whose specifications they do not set.

US policy backdrop

The Inflation Reduction Act layered production tax credits and manufacturing incentives to widen the cost gap with imports. President Donald Trump's administration "gutted much of that Biden-era climate law" but left "incentives for most cleantech manufacturing and for grid storage deployment in place," Canary Media reported, while introducing additional protectionist measures that push developers toward domestically assembled cells.

The US battery sector "has since begun to flourish" under that framework, the outlet noted, though the durability of those credits through the next congressional cycle will determine whether projects now under construction convert to commercial throughput — and whether domestic cells reach cost parity with Chinese imports once subsidies unwind.

What happens next

Two regulatory milestones will dictate the trajectory. The EU's 2030 self-sufficiency benchmark is a hard date that will expose the gap between announced European gigafactory capacity and actual operating volume. On the US side, the renewal or phase-out of IRA cell-manufacturing credits will set the price signal every domestic recycler and OEM is currently pricing into long-term contracts.

Underlying both is the same material arithmetic: BloombergNEF's doubling forecast implies gigawatt-hours of additional feedstock moving toward end-of-life within a decade. Whether the Western recycling build-out can capture that stream — or whether Chinese refiners continue to dominate the recovery chain — hinges on the policy decisions due before the decade closes.